[BSDCert] Open Source degrees

[Machtelt Garrels]

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On Thu, 23 Feb 2006, Dru wrote:

> - exams are not designed to be practical. Unless the course teaching the
>    material in the exam is supported by a larger context (e.g. one course
>    in a well designed university/college diploma), it is a mistake to take
>    a IT certification course to learn how to use the product. It shouldn't even
>    be a consideration if you take a "boot camp" course as it is humanly
>    impossible to learn a product in a week or consider yourself an expert after
>    40 hours of use...
>
> - it is so luck of the draw when you slap down your $ and put your faith
>    in a training center and the instructor for the course. "Official" only
>    means they spent the money in the hopes of making money. I'm sure we could
>    literally sell a book on training horror stories experienced by the
>    people on this list (hmmm, wonder if that could be a fundraiser???)

A while ago I was ask to do a speech on Linux certs for LinuxWorldExpo in
Utrecht, The Netherlands.  I discussed exactly these points, and many
others, and lateron translated the speech into English.  It might be a bit
coloured because of my work for LPI, though.  And it does not talk about
BSD, but I think BSD can easily be placed into this picture.

For those who are interested, it's here:

http://tille.xalasys.com/articles/Linuxdays.lu-CertificationComparison.pdf

I hope by next time I do this speech, I can also tell about BSD ;-)

> - lab manual for students which consists of enough background theory to
>    get started, followed by a hands-on exercise designed to enforce the
>    concept in the theory, followed by some probing questions to make sure
>    the student "got it", followed by references to additional information
>    should the student wish to pursue more information on that subject
>
> - instructor manual containing more background theory to provide a larger
>    context, suggestions for class discussion, more probing questions to ask
>    students as they do their labs, sample quizzes and tests to help reinforce
>    the material

See below..

> It still comes down to an agreed upon framework to bring this into
> actuality. How do we:
>
> - collaborate without driving the editors nuts? I really think a
>    collaboration of people with real-world experience doing different
>    things on differing BSDs would make an awesome text but I'm not sure how to
>    compile everything together without losing anything
>
> - pay people? Putting a book together is a lot of work and time away from
>    the day job that feeds the family

We should take care not to re-invent the wheel.  A lot of these things
have already been done, or can be copied from existing manuals.  As I'm
rather new to this list, I might not be aware of all the infrastructure we
have, but a wiki would seem like a good idea.

In order to shorten the development time, I'm willing to contribute quite
some materials as a framework.  I've taught courses for Sun and based upon
the good and the bad that I saw there, I wrote several courses, both
freely and privately available, and I collected all materials for quizzes,
examples, exercises and such that I ever used.  Most of that is already
typed out and on-line, too.  And I'm sure there are many others here who
are or have been a trainer and can contribute readily from what they
collected over the years.  After all, it's UNIX we are talking about, it
has been around for 30 years.  _Something_ good must exist for trainers
and trainees about such a system :)

> - publish the result?

Can be done on-line and with POD for those who want a printed copy.  But
let's first focus on the course materials.

Tille.

- --
My Penguin, my freedom.		http://tille.xalasys.com
Books:				http://writers.fultus.com/garrels
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